NBA player Jason Collins comes out, Twitter reacts

He made history today as the first openly gay male professional athlete, Twitter cheered

Shares

April 29, 2013 8:36PM (UTC)

NBA free agent Jason Collins is the first active male athlete to come out as gay in the history of professional sports. Many on Twitter viewed this very big news as, appropriately enough, very big news.

A sampling of the cheers for Collins and questions about what's next for gay athletes in professional sports:

Advertisement:

[embedtweet id="328902203379175425"]

[embedtweet id="328902277303775233"]

[embedtweet id="328902367657472000"]

[embedtweet id="328902429078855682"]

[embedtweet id="328901917507989504"]

[embedtweet id="328903558609125377"]

[embedtweet id="328891585339203585"]

[embedtweet id="328912978055413761"]

[embedtweet id="328905675889598465"]

[embedtweet id="328907441746108416"]

[embedtweet id="328903861307838464"]

[embedtweet id="328904963008913408"]

[embedtweet id="328894970440327169"]

[embedtweet id="328889050394161152"]

Advertisement:

[embedtweet id="328898610899079168"]

But not everyone was impressed with Collins' historic announcement. Particularly Breitbart editor-at-large and expert Twitter troll Ben Shapiro, who doesn't feel Collins is a very good ball player and so really doesn't care much that he made the league-altering decision to come out:

[embedtweet id="328894638943502338"]

[embedtweet id="328894989285351424"]

[embedtweet id="328895665344229378"]

Katie McDonough

Katie McDonough is Salon's politics writer, focusing on gender, sexuality and reproductive justice. Follow her on Twitter @kmcdonovgh or email her at kmcdonough@salon.com.